Better? Better!

Well, a bit anyway. When Wim dropped in this morning with the dogs for our regular Saturday morning coffee and chin-wag, rainy squalls were still passing through. Shortly after he arrived, the sun came out and although we had the occasional light shower after that and the sun kept disappearing from time to time behind angry looking grey clouds, the weather improved a bit. It still remained rather windy, though.

So I took the opportunity to nip across to Galinat with the aim of replacing the two of Régis’s heavy old covers that I’d used on the Savannah’s left wing and rear fuselage with the lighter ones that I bought yesterday and generally seeing if I could improve the job I’d done of wrapping the aircraft up against the weather. In fact, it was still too windy to do much more than replace the heavy covers and try to rearrange the others a bit because if I’d tried to take any more off, they and I would probably have ended up being blown across the airfield.

But the end result, although not ideal, was definitely an improvement, as the following pictures show.

Anyway, that will have to be it, I think, until the weather begins to pick up and I can prepare ASY for a move to Malbec. Much as I’d like to be able to get a flight or two in if there’s the odd break in the weather, as I mentioned before, taking off and replacing the covers would be just too much of a fag.

And then as I was driving up the hill to get off the airfield, I heard that familiar sound – it was a large flight of cranes making their annual trip north. Every year at this time, these courageous birds instinctively decide when winter is over and begin their heroic flight from their winter nesting grounds in North Africa and southern Spain to their summer homes in northern Europe. Its a spectacular sight and a privilege to see hundred upon hundred of these birds calling non-stop as they plough unerringly northwards, especially when faced with a cruel head-wind as is the case this year.

I jumped out of the car and grabbed my camera and there were two groups almost overhead Galinat. As I watched, they sensed that there was ridge-lift caused by the deflection of the northerly wind by the hillside and their echelons began to break up as they merged and came together into two groups. They then began to wheel and circle with wings outstretched and hardly moving as they began to ascend in the updrafts, carried southwards as they climbed.

The first group was more successful than the second and resumed their flight north having gained at least 500 feet, I would say, without being blown back too far south. The second group were not so lucky, and when I got back into the car after taking a few pictures, they were still calling and trying to climb having been blown back at least a coupe of kilometres or so.

Here are some of the shots that I took of them. It’s a pity that the sky was so grey.

Are they right and is winter really over? They are rarely if ever wrong, so maybe there’s some hope that the weather actually will begin to pick up some time soon. One local weather forecast shows that we should be heading into warmer, sunnier, more settled weather as from next week-end. I just hope it’s right!